


Young Sam

by CaraMia



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 12:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8446486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaraMia/pseuds/CaraMia
Summary: I've spent probably too much time wondering who could possibly be patrician after Vetinari. Recently, I came up with a satisfactory answer.Consider: Young Sam.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I realized after I started writing this that several others had the same idea. Here's my addition to that particular piece of fanon.

He is always "Young Sam" even in his third decade. His mother, gods rest her, had told him how delighted his father had been every time someone said "Young Sam". He'd hated it in his teen years. Now, well on his way to forty, it is just the way things are. 

Think about this. 

Young Sam thinks he wants to be a copper - how could he not? But it doesn't take long, following his father through the precincts and cases, before he's bored. Crime is so petty, barely inventive. And the truly inventive crimes are not something he has the stomach for, not yet. He doesn't want to end up able to witness horror without it turning his stomach. (Vimes's have always known themselves well - keep the beast back for when you need it. Young Sam begins life determined never to have such a beast.) 

(Don't forget this - Sam Vimes is an intelligent man. His interests are just very focused. He _knows_ people, knows how they will react, what drives them. Sam Vimes is determined to knock some sense into people, or, failing that, make sure they don't knock each other too much.) 

There's a roof-raising argument when Young Sam says he wants to go to the Assassins Guild. He is nobility, despite his father's protests, and the Assassins educate young nobles, have for generations. Sybil calms them - she's a negotiator and regularly handles dragons, remember? A disagreement between Sams is mostly amusing to her, these days. 

Young Sam spends a year amongst the Assassins due to pure Ramkin-Vimes stubbornness. He hates it after a week. They're the same: boring, petty, too wrapped up in their own importance to see what's right in front of their noses. 

He has learned patience from his mother, who spent her whole life being condescended to and had, throughout Young Sam's childhood, smiled politely at insults and done absolutely nothing in revenge. Lady Sybil was kind. Stoneface Sam Vimes was not. Insults were met with flat stares and extremely petty yet satisfying revenge - Sam Vimes knew exactly what pettiness would most enrage. The scruffiest, most belligerent coppers were sent to patrol the fancier neighborhoods of Ankh - complaints were met with the dumb copper routine. Young Sam never saw it fail, except on Lord Vetinari. 

Vetinari. For a long time, just a name in stories around the dinner table (when the Ramkin-Vimes's could manage to all be in the same house at the same time, dinner was sacrosanct). Their first meeting was not spectacular. Vetinari had, of course, met Young Sam as a child. 

The first meeting Young Sam remembered was at his tenth birthday party. Vetinari had arrived in a black coach. Sybil and Sam met him at the door with a smile and a frown, respectively. Vetinari only stayed long enough to aggravate Young Sam's father and - he'd stood over Young Sam and held out a hand. 

"Happy birthday, Sam." 

Young Sam shook the hand, bewildered. He'd never been called just "Sam" before or since that moment. 

Years later, and Young Sam has spent time in every guild (aside from the Seamstresses - not that he didn't try. They'd let him be a bouncer to take care of difficult customers. Mrs. Palm had laughed herself to tears when he showed up at their door). He's nearing the end of his twenties with little to show for it except an intimate knowledge of the city and its people. 

Pretty useless information, generally. 

Young Sam did not just learn from Ankh-Morpork. He took a couple of years to wander the Disc, to see what other places did better, how other people lived, what they wanted from their land and from their neighbors. 

He learned how much of the city was in his bones. 

(If Sam Vimes becomes the deity responsible for the Watch and for the Law, Young Sam becomes the deity of Ankh-Morpork herself.) 

Young Sam was raised by giants. By Sam Vimes, the city's best and most annoyed protector - saving her from herself time and time again, knowing when to be the thin brown line and when to stand back and let the fire cleanse (never). By Sybil Ramkin-Vimes, who was the real ambassador for Ankh-Morpork, working in the shadows while her husband passed around the cucumber sandwiches. 

They would be enough to shape Young Sam into a fearsome defender of the city, but they're not all. It takes a village to raise a child, and in Young Sam's case it took a Watch. Carrot, arguably the rightful king (which nobody could really hold against him), took him on patrol for years, even when Young Sam was out of his Watchman phase. When the Sams patrolled, they lurked - learned the feel of the streets beneath their boots and how to read the feel of the people in the streets themselves. When Carrot and Young Sam patrolled, the younger man learned how to walk and be seen - to draw all eyes. Carrot did it without thinking, without knowing or understanding. Young Sam studied him carefully and practiced. The effect, when he tried it, was stunning, as long as Carrot wasn't around (Carrot would always draw all eyes at all times). He also learned how everyone in the city was connected. Carrot didn't just know the dwarves; he really, truly, knew everyone. Carrot used this information as neighborly leverage - oh, you've had a recent run of good fortune, have you heard of my friend just down the street, he could use a job, hard worker - on and on it went. 

Carrot taught Young Sam to see the potential good in people. 

Sam taught his son not to take the good for granted. 

Young Sam learned when to shut up and listen, to let others speak for themselves. Angua and Sally were an education on danger in unassuming packages. Cheery and Carrot spent hours debating dwarf-ness and gender, Young Sam a wide-eyed spectator. (He spent a month as Igor's apprentice and never said what he learned there. Everyone carefully did not ask. It helped the rumors later on that he had eyes in the back of his head.) 

There were others, too. Many thought Moist von Lipwig would be the next patrician - Moist thought it himself, most days. It would be the last straw, he was sure. Vetinari had handed him the post office, the bank, the railroad, the clacks, and several more things he wasn't legally allowed to talk about. Probably Vetinari would find it hilarious to hand him the patrician-ship as well. 

It took a couple of years before Moist saw that he was not Vetinari's intended successor. Young Sam spent a lot of time with Moist, in the post office and mint and railroad, learning and negotiating. He had Sam Vimes's talent for sticking to a job until it's done and his mother's artful tact and quite a few tricks of his own. Moist taught him a few more, along with sleight of hand. It took him a week to realize that Young Sam already knew all the card tricks and had been letting Moist teach him to make him feel better. Adora Belle had laughed for a solid minute when he'd told her and proceeded to invite the whole Ramkin-Vimes bunch for dinner. 

It became so amazingly obvious that when Vetinari finally retired, the meeting of guild leaders conferred for five minutes before settling on Young Sam - and the first three minutes had been everyone sitting down and exchanging greetings. 

\--- 

There's a new secretary in the Oblong Office. Patrician Young Sam Ramkin-Vimes is out on a walk (what he calls a patrol and his staff calls a logistical nightmare), so they're training his new secretary on what places not to stand in the Office and how to address the patrician. (No one's entirely sure how much of the secretarial handbook was made up by Drumknott just to mess with future generations of staff. The young ones suspect all of it, the old ones know better. A lot of Vetinari's traps were never found, and given the tendency of the old Sam Vimes for booby-trapping his house, they thought it best not to leave it to chance.) 

Cordelia Sybil Schmitz is new to Ankh-Morpork and the Patrician's Palace, but she's not new to hazing and she's mostly sure they're all having her on. 

"Young Sam," she repeats slowly, hoping to catch one of the older secretaries expressions twitching. They remain completely serious. "The Patrician. Of Ankh-Morpork. Wants to be referred to. As Young. Sam." 

The circle of heads around her bobs in agreement. 

"Not, for example, as Mr. Vimes?" 

The shaking of heads around her is very emphatic. Several of the staff even look scandalized. Baffled, Cordelia gives in and exclaims, "But _why_?" 

A hand lands on her shoulder, and she looks up into the kind face of Rutherford Drumknott (the original Drumknott's stamp collecting nephew). 

"Because, Ms. Schmitz," he explains, "he's _our_ Young Sam." 

As if that was any kind of answer at all!* 

(*It is, if you remember that all the citizens of Ankh-Morpork consider themselves to have had a hand in raising Young Sam. Very few human residents of Ankh-Morpork remember the time before the Vimes's. Everyone either knew his father, watched Young Sam grow up, grew up beside him, or grew up with him as the kindly Patrician. He is, for all intents and purposes, _their_ Young Sam.) 

\---

Cordelia was raised in a very formal household and struggles through her first few encounters with the Patrician, trying and failing to get the words "Young Sam" out of her mouth to refer to the most powerful man on the Disc. Eventually, one day, she cracks and calls him "Mr. Ramkin!" - gaining his attention in time to save his life from an ill-aimed serving spoon. 

When she's called to his office later, she's sure she's going to be sacked. She's somewhat nonplussed when, instead, he shakes her hand and laughs, thanking her for her quick thinking. 

"Mr. Ramkin," he says, eyes twinkling, "will be a perfectly suitable form of address, Ms. Schmitz." 

She's mortified he noticed her problem with "Young Sam", but extremely relieved, nonetheless. 

Maybe someday she'll work up the nerve to tell him she's named after his mother.* 

(*He already knows.)

**Author's Note:**

> For the story of how Sam Vimes becomes a deity, check out [Mister Vimes'd Go Spare! by Lunik](http://archiveofourown.org/works/244534). I really cannot recommend it enough.


End file.
